Our Special Place
by lotuskasumi
Summary: From a prompt on Tumblr for a roommates AU. Just a drabble about two people who live together and loving everything about it — except saying that they love it. (Whouffle/Twelve x Clara)


They looked more than a little silly living together, their ages being what they were ("Comically contrasting," "I was going to say _charming_, but… You're the English teacher." "Hopefully." "You will be. I have faith."). They also knew that they could have easily gone off to find other places to live by now should either one of them ever decide that's what they wanted. Money wasn't the issue, nor was there a lack of resources when it came to finding available flats. Something else prevented them, something big, something… terrifyingly decisive. It was more than an elephant in the room — it was the entire bloody circus.

"So what _do _you want to do? Where do you see yourself in a year?" Everyone kept asking it, as if the future were still something for Clara and John to decide, as if they hadn't already started off on their paths for what they wished to be and wanted to live. ("You got a good thirty year head start on me." "Can't help the year I was born, can I?" "Didn't mean it like that"). It was the topic from which Clara and John could never escape, and which their social circle seemed determine to ever dredge up as a conversation killer at the end of dinners and reunions. Friends, potential loved onces, co-workers and family, no one was immune to this sort of far too personal, insensitive probing — except for John's family. He didn't have any. And he didn't have many friends, now that Clara came to think of it. Co-workers? Well…

"I work better when I'm alone."

"But you aren't alone; you work out of the home." _Our home, _she could have said. Could have, but didn't.

"Yes, because I _prefer _to work alone."

"That's not what you said."

"No, but it's what I meant."

"But you aren't alone, John. Not when I'm here." Clara never said this to him, though she did sometimes say it aloud when she lay awake in bed, looking up at the ceiling, listening to him pace in his room, then quietly up and down the hall outside hers. He couldn't hear her, and she know he wasn't even listening for her voice, so she knew it was the safest time to say such a thing.

John never rested, or hardly seemed to need to. He worked late and slept little, yet never seemed to lose the ever present store of energy that kept him alive and kicking, with a level of vivaciousness Clara both envied and admired. She hoped she was like that when she got to be his age — and the thought would sometimes make her smile, until she did a quick bit of mental math. _When I'm his age, he won't live here anymore. He probably won't be able to. He'll be — well. He'll be somewhere else. In another home._

But that thought was as miserable as it was morbid. Men like John didn't go quietly into old age, or any age for that matter. Men like John lived and thrived and did so in spite of their alotted years in life. They lived to spite the very mortality in their bones. Clara loved this about him. She loved everything about him from the moment they'd met ("It wasn't a dare." "It was definitely a dare." "No, it was a _bet. _I _bet _you that you would find another flat in two weeks' time and you lost it." "I specifically remember you saying, 'I _dare _you to find a better place than this,' Clara." "So did you?" "What?" "Find something better?" "… No. I mean, not yet.").

Most of all, she loved the home she found with him. Their very own special place, so sorely needed and dearly discovered after years of pinging back and forth from temporary homes, best friends' couches, even to dreaded hostels. ("You've travelled everywhere, haven't you?" "I suppose I have, yes. Everywhere except where I want to be." "Where's that?" "Home." "Tickets to Glasgow aren't exactly worth an arm and a leg, John." "Don't joke, Clara, you're not the type." "And yet, the Doctor smiles.")

She loved everything about this stick-thin, ill-tempered, quick-tongued, charming man.

Now if only she could tell him about it.

John often wondered the same thing about himself. He was old enough to get his act together on such things, old enough to know how this sort of thing went — except he had never perfected it. Never really refined any sort of technique to the miserably, gory art of splitting open one's chest, showing a darling someone your shuddering heart, and saying, "It's all right if _you _stab it, you know. Any bit of pain from you is something to cherish."

That's what love was like. Always, always, that's what love could be: asking to be destroyed by a darling hand. John thought it best not to say anything. Clara, of a similar mindset, figured it would work itself out if she only let it rest. But the truth, like blood, Dear Reader, will always come out in time. Even for two sorts as stubborn as stone, as unyielding as iron, and as temperamental as a flame.

Some people are just born to be together, even if they can't quite find the words to say so to others, or even to themselves. They're born to be together, and nothing under the sun or beyond can keep them away — not for long, anyway.


End file.
